Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), the nation’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday said it plans to invest US$247.88 million in a Vietnamese steelmaking venture through five of its major subsidiaries in second-round fundraising.
The investment is to replenish Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp’s (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業) operational capital, which plans to raise US$500 million in the second installment of its ongoing capital injection project, statements from Formosa’s subsidiaries to the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, the largest foreign direct investment venture in Vietnam, would see its paid-in capital increase from US$5 billion to US$5.5 billion, a Formosa Plastics official said by telephone.
Four of the group’s members — Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台塑化纖) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) — each hold an 11.432 percent stake in the Vietnamese unit.
Each company is to pay about US$57.17 million in the second installment in accordance with their shareholdings, separate filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Formosa Taffeta Co (福懋興業), the group’s textile affiliate, which holds a 3.847 percent stake, also plans to invest US$19.23 million in Formosa Ha Tinh Steel.
The investment requires board approvals from each company.
The Vietnamese joint venture would have an installation capacity of 7 million tonnes of steel products a year if its two furnaces achieve full capacity, a report by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said.
The second blast furnace is scheduled to become operational in the first half of next year, Formosa Plastics said on Wednesday last week.
The first furnace, which began production in May this year, has an annual capacity of 3.5 million tonnes, the company said.
In related news, Formosa Plastics is to inject new capital of US$267 million in its fully owned Chinese subsidiary, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
The Ningbo-based unit — which supplies acrylate, polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride to Chinese customers — has paid-in capital of NT$772.02 million, the filing said.
The new investment would be used to expand production of propylene, an upstream material in petrochemical supply chains, following the company’s long-term target of achieving vertical integration in the Chinese market.
Formosa Plastics shares yesterday edged up 0.11 percent to NT$94.8 in Taipei trading ahead of the announcement, outperforming the benchmark TAIEX, which fell 0.37 percent.
China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), one of major shareholders of Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, yesterday did not show any interest in joining the latest fundraising plan. It did not participate in the venture’s first-round fundraising project.
CSC holds a 22.5 percent stake in the venture.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS